The only real action at the resumed nuclear negotiations between Iran
and the six world powers in Istanbul Saturday, April 14, was played
out on the sidelines. The Obama administration’s intense effort to
put relations with Tehran on a new, more amicable footing, was thrown
back in its face by the head of the Iranian delegation, Saeed Jalili,
who gave the senior US delegate, Under Secretary for Political
Affairs Wendy Sherman, a humiliating runaround after she was reported
in Tehran as having invited him to a bilateral meeting during the
lunch break.

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First, Iranian officials first announced there would be no meeting.
Next, third-party efforts, especially by Russian and Turkish
officials, to arrange one were spurned. Then, the American side
publicized Sherman’s invitation to Jalili, calculating that the
Iranian delegation leader could hardly break every rule of diplomatic
propriety by turning her down. Nonetheless, after issuing conflicting
reports - some claiming Jalili had accepted the US delegate’s
invitation - the official Iranian news agency IRNA announced: "The
Iranian delegation rejected the request of Wendy Sherman, the
representative of the American delegation, for a bilateral meeting."

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To drive the snub home, Tehran played up Jalili’s meetings with heads
of the Russian and European delegations. According to some diplomatic
sources, Tehran took it amiss that Sherman is junior in rank to
Jalili who is head of Iran’s National Security Council and therefore
decided against the meeting.

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The session ended with May 23 being set as the date for the next
round of talks. They will take place in Baghdad. Accepting this
venue was another American concession for the sake of keeping up a
friendly dialogue with Tehran.

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debkafile summed up the opening session of the nuclear talks with
Iran in an earlier report April 14.

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At Istanbul, US puts better ties with Iran ahead of nuclear issues

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European diplomats close to the nuclear negotiations which Iran and
six world powers launched in Istanbul Saturday, April 14 praised the
first session as “constructive” because all the participants agreed
that it laid the ground for a follow-up meeting in a month or six
weeks. debkafile: For this modest "concession," Tehran won its first
advantage, time for advancing its nuclear weapons program and a
substantial delay for any US or Israel military action to preempt
this advance – up until mid-summer.

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At around the same time, in July, President Barack Obama is committed
to declare the next round of sanctions against Iran - a tight
clampdown on its banks and oil exports.

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It is doubtful if then Tehran will consent to go back to
the “everything is on the table” policy it pursued surprisingly for
the first time in Turkey. Until now, the Iranians refused to allow
its nuclear activities, especially in the military field, to be aired
at international forums. Yet at the Saturday session, Saeed Jalili,
Iran’s senior nuclear negotiator avoided mention of sanctions and, as
debkafile predicted on April 11, did not demand the lifting of
penalties as a precondition for negotiations.

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His statement to the meeting was not released. European diplomatic
sources only quoted him as saying generally that he was ready “to
seriously engage on the Iranian nuclear issue.”

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US Under Secretary for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman is quoted as
saying that “relations between Washington and Tehran need not be so
bad.”

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During the break for lunch, when informal meetings traditionally take
place among the delegates, Sherman is reported by Western sources to
have asked to talk to Jalili, but whether or not they met was not
stated. Shortly after, sources in Tehran denied that the US and
Iranian delegation leaders had met separately but later said Jalili
had accepted her invitation.

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Diplomatic circles in the West including Israel were surprised at the
choice of Wendy Sherman as US delegation leader. She is reputed to be
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s closest and most influential
adviser. This is taken as a signal from Washington to Tehran that the
Obama administration is more interested in improving the climate of
relations with Iran at the diplomatic level than reaching
understandings on the nuclear issue.

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On April 7, debkafile’s Washington sources disclosed that this goal
was underscored in the message from President Obama to Iran’s supreme
leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip
Erdogan delivered on March 29.

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The president expressed the hope that Iranian leaders would abandon
their hostile rhetoric and stop referring to the United States as
their enemy. Erdogan was directed to inform the supreme leader that
statements from Tehran crediting Obama’s policy for this improvement
in tone would be welcomed, for example, Khamenei’s remark on March 8
in which he welcomed comments by US President Barack for “for pushing
forward diplomacy and not war as a solution to Tehran’s nuclear
ambition.”

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This initial US approach and the absence from the American delegation
of any important expert on Iran’s nuclear program have raised concern
among some of America’s Western allies as well as Israel about the
prospects of the Istanbul talks getting anywhere in their avowed
objective of reining in Iran’s nuclear aspirations. (Copyright 2000-
2012 DEBKAfile. 04/14/12)